"Test everything; retain what is good.” (1 Thes 5:21) A laywoman expresses concerns about issues in the Roman Catholic Church to foster positive dialogue by posing and exploring questions.
Please remember that Canon Law says it is not only a right but a duty to question the church. Also, Canon Law provides an over-riding power to the sensus fidelium (sense of the faithful). By this, Canon Law says that if the sensus fidelium (collective of the faithful) reject a law, it is not valid.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Reflections for the Easter Triduum

This Holy Thursday marked a first for
me.I actually uttered the words, “Well…nooo
SHIT” aloud in a cathedral during Mass.I did not mean to offend or to say it but it slipped out as a
spontaneous reaction to the bishop’s homily.Let me summarize what he said that prompted it:

1.He encouraged priests to visit people, telling them they shouldn’t
remain holed-up in their rectories.

2.He observed that most priests in his diocese were like him and preferred
staying home in solitude, as though this was a natural personality disposition
for a parish priest – to eschew the people of God (which by the way “People of
God” is the definition of “the church” according to the catechism).

3.He said he had visited parishioners when he was assigned as a transitional
deacon decades ago and sympathized that visiting laypeople is “tedious and
tiresome.”

4.He said that when he undertook this “tedious and tiresome” task of
visiting people, he also extended an offer to every single couple experiencing
marital difficulties to help them repair their marriages but no one accepted
his generous offer.

And at that point, imagining a married
person being approached by a young seminarian with no marital experience, no
training in marital counseling (because seminaries don’t have courses in
marital counseling), no training in marriage and family living (because
seminaries don’t teach that either), possibly struggling with his own sexuality,
and sporting an attitude that talking to them was “tedious and tiresome” but offering
to fix their broken marriage, I let
loose with, “Well…nooo SHIT!” at the thought of his generous offer being
wholesale rejected.

The event at which this took place was
another first for me.I’d never attended
a Holy Thursday Chrism Mass.This is the
annual Mass in which the holy oils for the year are blessed and later
distributed to representatives from every diocesan parish – a profound symbolic
connection point for the “catholic” (def. “universal”) church.

At this liturgy priests also renew
their vows and re-pledge their obedience to their bishop.So, it’s a bit of a bro-mance moment amongst
the ordained to the point that the bishop began his homily telling the laity
that his homily really wasn’t for them.We were kind of interlopers in their same-gender love-fest liturgy, I
guess.Or maybe we were supposed to
serve as adoring fans or props; I don’t know.But since the message wasn’t intended for me, it gave me the opportunity
to listen and reflect as a third party.

Having operated as a business leader
for over a decade, I began thinking about organizational development topics
which flowed into assembling a hypothetical priest job posting in my head.When I post a job, I first think about the
skills and personality characteristics that are important for the role.For a parish priest, one might assume “likes
people” is at the top of the list along with “likes to interact with people.”In the business world, we call those “meets
minimum” criteria.

Unlike a priest ordained as a
contemplative monk who devotes many hours to praying for people from afar, a
parish priest is supposed to work with the people.Canon law even tells them they have to get to
know the people.I guess I assumed,
incorrectly, that a church leader would want to do that versus think it a “tedious
and tiresome” part of the job. And
though one can sometimes manage to keep a job in which a major facet of that
job is considered a drudgery, it’s hard to see it as a “vocation” (a calling)
rather than an “occupation” (something that occupies your time and provides
income).

Also, typically embracing such a major dimension
of the job becomes a “critical success factor” for the role.So, this launched me into wondering what church
leadership think are critical success factors versus what the laity think are
critical success factors.

There’s the pious theatre dimension of
the clergy leading worship - though scripture never indicates Jesus led religious
worship services.The pious theatre
dimension arises from an imitation of Jesus’ Last Supper celebrated with
friends – the one where he got down on his knees, washed their dirty, sweaty, stinky
feet and served them rather than expecting to be served.Currently seminaries place a lot of emphasis
on training pious thespians but the part where Jesus humbly washes feet is often
rather lost other than the annual required symbolic re-enactment during the
Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper.

There’s also the teaching dimension of the
clergy in an effort to imitate Jesus who did a lot of teaching.But usually when Jesus taught it was to the
chagrin of religious leaders of his day.Therefore, imitating Jesus as a teacher requires imitating his teaching
style of showing up at places where he wasn’t the leader and often wasn’t
welcomed, and then usurping control from religious leaders who are spouting
self-serving messages that they attribute to God. Today as in Jesus’ time, religious
authorities try to stop people who do this by censuring, excommunicating or
mocking them.

Somehow church leaders shifted Jesus
from the role of a non-conformist who challenged and flaunted religious authority
to one of a dutiful, obedient, non-boat-rocking middle manager singing
religious leaders’ party line and praises.They say they work for Jesus but I really think they have made Jesus
their subordinate.

By ascribing their teachings an “infallibility”
designation, they declare they already fully know the mind of Jesus and have
known it for centuries and anything they don’t know ain’t worth knowin’.They try to convince the laity that there is
no need to explore or discover more about Jesus than what they have bottled and
been selling for years.And like Coca-Cola, they say anything bottled outside their franchise isn't the real thing. Such
explorations and deviations are labeled “erroneous” or “dangerous” by church leaders.

No wonder they try to lock Jesus in the
tabernacle and limit access, meting out Jesus through the sacraments that they
say they control.How dangerous it is to
let true Jesus imitators operate and how dangerous to let people think they can access Jesus without the clergy dispensing him.It
might make religious leaders truly subordinate to Jesus again and ruin their “Jesus
vending machine” business.

Imitating Jesus’ teaching style also involves
teaching from experiential knowledge of people’s day-to-day struggles.It’s a “heart” and “hand” thing more than a “head”
thing mouthing proper thoughts. Thus, it involves teaching a lot outside of the
four walls of religious buildings and teaching via actions.It involves humility.It involves loving people with an agape love
blossoming from inextricably intertwined personal intimacy.

I have difficulty seeing how this leads to thinking
an entire diocese of priests who prefer solitude and find interacting with
people “tedious and tiresome” is
anything other than a huge problem. I think my kids might use the term "face-palm" at this point.

O.K. so we’ve identified a
problem.Hopefully it’s just isolated to
this one diocese but I kind of doubt it.The bishop who spoke yesterday has served as seminary rector where
seminarians from many dioceses study.He’s
pretty much spent his entire late adolescent through adult life hanging out
with priests, and from that context he found his sentiments perfectly natural
observations.So, the question is “What
can and should laypeople do?”

Prayer is always good.We can and should pray that these guys who
carry delusions of being the most superior imitators of Christ have an
awakening.But I think action in the
form of interaction is good too.Regardless
of what religious leaders think, they should learn as much or more from the laity
than we do from them.What are we doing
to help educate these guys?

We are all called to imitate Christ and
that means sometimes telling religious leaders you disagree.Sometimes a little creativity and humor helps
convey the lesson in a non-threatening way.For example earlier this week I sent the bishop an email inquiring about
incense usage due to my asthma, received his reply that incense would be in
abundance so I might want to avoid the liturgy, and responded back that I would
attend, sit as near the front as possible and let him witness any breathing
issues that resulted from his incense overuse.I explained that I was sure that since incense is just a symbol of our
prayers, I knew he’d rather have the real deal in abundance by having me and my
prayers there than having an abundance of the symbol.I attended and incense seemed judiciously
applied and the cathedral doors remained open providing good ventilation…no
respiratory distress.

Other times, yes, you will be treated
like Jesus was – you’ll be seen as a threat by those in power - you’ll be
labeled and ostracized by some.If you’re
not being labeled as a troublemaker by religious authorities every once in a
while, are you imitating Jesus as well as you should?

I’ve said before that the power of the
papal office is changing and the extent to which it changes depends more upon
the 1.2 billion Catholics than the one guy wearing the pointy hat.If 1.2 billion people said, “no” to clergy
abuses, to corruption, to misuse of funds, to uncharitable treatment of people,
to the marginalization of women, to the neglect of the sick and impoverished, etc…
things would change in a hurry.If we
can die to our own apathy, and desire for either approval or absence of
disapproval, the church could be resurrected this very Easter.Or is that too “tedious and tiresome” for us?

4 comments:

Ah! So it was like pulling teeth to have a priest come anoint me or mom because meeting with the laity is icky. So it would stand to reason that when a person is ill, they are even ickier which would make visiting them beyond tedious and tiresome. I'm so glad I didn't die from my sepsis so I could still be around to hear this. (Yes, folks, this is MY diocese.)

Such a relief to find someone else feeling the same. My priest (ex-Benedictine contemplative) finds it hard to catch someone's eye.He is obsessed with adhering to the rules so we now sing endless plainchant, including lots of Latin.... (as someone with an MPhil from Oxford in NT, I don't recall any sensible scholar ever suggesting that Jesus normally spoke Latin). This afternoon I found myself at the headof the queue for communion after the altar servers, who all genuflected before receiving communion. I wondered what was going on but carried on as normal, simply standing, to find that a disapproving glare came my way. Why is it that he cannot be happy unless the laity a re fully obedient?? Just who is the church?? Thank you Ewe, you keep me sane and just about within the Church. Of course, no priest ever thinks to ask this simple laywoman about the meaning of the NT: with only 7 years of theological study, four on NT with some of the best scholars, what do I know????

Not only the church, but the world at large basically suffers from only one thing: male hubris. And nothing that can be done about that. The male biology was not designed to cope with equality, let alone promote it. God is not male, but the devil certainly is!

About Me

I am a single mother of three who from the eyes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy is in full communion with the Church. But I question if any woman is capable of being in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church due to clericalism, sexism, and the marginalization, and emotional abuse of women.
I hold a master degree in theology from Loyola (Master of Pastoral Studies, M.P.S.). I am not employed by the Catholic Church but rather am an executive consultant.
Some ask if I want to be a priest. We are baptized priest, prophet and king. I feel I am more called to exercise my prophetic voice than a priestly one.
(Artwork supplied courtesy of one of my daughters.)